Lobsters Want Hanging Chads Counted!

Will the hanging chad dispute ever end? Homarus americanus not only wants their chads to be counted they want the counters to be paid! Read on....

After a year of coalition-building among fishermen, lobstermen, scientists, legislators and the state Department of Environmental Protection, a vital lobster restoration bill was signed last week by Gov. M. Jodi Rell -- but with no funding to implement it. The bill's supporters were dismayed and angry that funding, $1 million per year for two years, was written out of the bill's language only three days before it was passed.

The bill requires the DEP commissioner to ensure that V-shaped notches are nicked off the tails of mature female lobsters that licensed commercial fishermen land and then release in order to increase lobster egg production.

To compensate lobstermen for what they must release, the state would have paid them for the chads, or V-notches, they collected; if the same lobsters were caught repeatedly, field workers subcontracted by the DEP would have verified that and credited lobstermen for each re-release.

The DEP "cannot plan and implement the V-notching program without funding," said Eric Smith, assistant to DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy. "The program was modeled after Rhode Island's program that used third-party contractors to verify chads, and we don't have the money to do that.

In place of the V-notch conservation program, the DEP established a new regulation gauge for legal lobster carapace size, to go into effect Aug. 11, Smith said. "It's an increase of 1/32 of an inch, and not significant compared to what V-notching could do to benefit the population within three years," he said. In fact, the gauge increase could reduce lobstermen's income up to 40 percent, Cook said.